Provocation (1)
I faced down Ding Yuan, who had barged uninvited into my camp, hiding my bewilderment as best I could.
I was planning to pay him a visit about the Bing Province army sooner or later anyway, but to think he would come in person...
He seemed even more impetuous than I had expected.
The world's verdict on Ding Yuan ran something like this. The Wolf of Bing Province. A warlord who had secured the Emperor's sacred person and purged the chieftains of the Ten Attendants, then shot to the heart of the central government in the blink of an eye. Having driven out the eunuchs, he had expelled the graft-ridden old generals of the Grand General's headquarters, and he even possessed the knack of lavishing wealth on officers and men to win them over.
The man whose authority loomed over Sili Province now appeared with bodyguards and military officers in tow, every one of them sharp-eyed and hard-faced enough to cow any ordinary soul. Most of those guards were elites worth a hundred men apiece, wearing the vicious look of killers who, like the Liangzhou rebels, would carry out a massacre without a flicker of hesitation. Judging men by their faces alone is a mistake, I know — but the aura rolling off their bodies was drenched in killing intent. That he had come with only an escort, at least, suggested he had not marched here to open a war on the spot.
"Are you Han Yeong?"
The white-haired old general in his crimson armor glared at me with towering arrogance. True, I was younger than most of the civil and military officials at court — but to toss etiquette aside entirely and open with informal sneers at a first meeting? Now I could see exactly what his character was made of.
Has he been aging in reverse?
I was, by imperial decree, the General Who Pacifies the West, charged with suppressing rebellion in the west and keeping the interior at peace. Mine was hardly a station a man could trample — court etiquette discarded, "this punk" and "that punk" hurled about as he pleased. Even Cao Cao, older than I, had begun with honorifics and asked my leave before easing into casual speech, hadn't she? Sure enough, the gazes of everyone standing behind me turned razor-sharp.
Flanking Ding Yuan stood a brown-haired beauty with a cool, refined air and a man who looked as immovable as a boulder, guarding him on either side.
"That is correct... And you would be General Ding Yuan, Colonel of Martial Ferocity?"
Ding Yuan did not answer my question. He simply pressed on with whatever he had come to say.
"Shameless whelp. You leave my soldiers half-dead and cannot spare a single word of apology."
...Apology?
Snap.
My question ignored, and that shameless attitude on top of it — the blood rushed straight to my head.
I only gave the order to subdue them. It was Lu Bu who left them in tatters.
I glanced around Ding Yuan in search of Lu Bu, but she was nowhere in sight.
Had she been dismissed?
I honestly could not decide whether to call the man reckless or simply stupid, coming all this way without Lu Bu.
"Where do you think you're looking!!"
Believing himself ignored, Ding Yuan bellowed and moved to close the distance — and Ma Chao and Pang De, at my either side, barred his path with spear and crescent blade.
"Don't come any closer."
"I must ask you not to approach any further."
At the two women's bristling response, Ding Yuan's pair of guards raised their own weapons and squared off in turn. An air sharp as a drawn blade settled over the camp, poised to erupt into bloodshed at any moment.
"Never in my life have I seen the like of this... I am a loyal minister who shielded the Emperor from the treacherous Ten Attendants — courtesy I might forgive you for lacking, but you dare point weapons at me!?"
Haah...
At Ding Yuan's shameless, brutish conduct, I sighed openly in his face and gave up on maintaining even the pretense of courtesy. He had secured the Emperor's person, true — but a loyal minister? I did not see it.
My brows drew together, my gaze sharpening to a blade's edge as I asked,
"That is my question to ask. Why have you left the soldiers of Bing Province free to bleed the people of Luoyang dry?"
"Hmph. Rewarding soldiers who bled to put down the rebellion is my right as their lord. Not a matter for a green whelp like you to stick his nose into."
Ding Yuan looked down on me from start to finish, as if I were some boy not yet twenty. The very portrait of a hidebound old reactionary who regarded everyone beneath him as less than human.
This bastard is no different from Dong Zhuo.
I had already written him off as rotten to the core back when he took He Jin's plan and butchered the people of Mengjin without a second thought. But face to face, the insolence simply poured off him. How a man like this had ever been adapted in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms as one who fought for the Han house was beyond me — unless it was to lend Lu Bu's betrayal a more devastating impact.
Just then a civil advisor at his side stepped close and gave Ding Yuan a meaningful look, and the old man throttled his rage for the moment.
"...Your manner is insolent, yes. But as a comrade who has held back the northern barbarians, I shall make you a special offer."
Out of nowhere?
The stubborn old man eased his fury and seemed about to dangle something before me.
"And that would be?"
I asked, genuinely curious what brand of bullshit he intended to spout.
"I shall give you a chance. Enter my service. Do that, and I will forgive everything."
Ding Yuan tilted his nose skyward and delivered the line with a greasy smile.
All that grandstanding, and this was what he had wanted to say?
The scheme was transparent: open with threats to break a young man's spirit, then magnanimously bestow an "opportunity" upon an inexperienced whelp. The sight of him playing the broad-minded benefactor turned my stomach on the spot.
Ding Yuan had entered politics riding the support of the court officials and had already folded the Grand General's headquarters troops into his own command. But his appetite seemed to have no bottom — he looked intent on swallowing the Liangzhou army as well.
But accept that offer? Never.
"If you come under me, then you—"
"...What a load of bullshit."
I let the expression I had been carefully managing crack wide open and spat the curse out.
"...What did you just say?!"
"Why in the hell would I crawl under a greed-soaked old relic like you? You make me sick, you bastard. Gone senile already, have we?"
"......"
The curses had poured out like a burst of rapid fire. Ding Yuan and his officers froze — and so, for that matter, did our own. Ma Chao and Yan Xing, who had known me the longest, along with several of our other officers, actually clapped their hands over their mouths; none of them had expected language that foul from me.
Apparently no one had anticipated me emptying an entire bowl of profanity over his head.
A great many people labored under a misconception about me. They saw me tending to the common folk often enough to mistake me for some gentle soul — but I had grown up in Liangzhou too, in a land with no master and no law. My tongue was coarse, and my temper ran hot. I simply kept my mouth clean when it served to win talent and allies to my side. When I had met Wang Yun and he declared he could not trust a man of my birth, I had swallowed the urge to bury him under a bowl of curses as well.
I was not so fine a man as to show respect to an ugly bastard who butchers civilians and sneers at everyone around him. I was already at the end of my rope — seething while barely holding my composure, ostracized by Wang Yun and the court officials as "the son of Han Sui, the man who once rose against the state" — and then he stood there fanning the flames right to my face. How, exactly, were polite words supposed to come out?
"Y-you insolent—!!"
Ding Yuan was incandescent with rage, but there was little he could do about it here. He had evidently brought only a handful of guards, meaning to sound me out for recruitment under the cover of polite conversation — but this was our army's fortified camp, and Lu Bu was nowhere at his side. Even at the cost of wearing the stigma of a coward, if I resolved to end him, I could muster the entire army and put Ding Yuan in the ground. He had staged himself as the confident elder statesman, the man no whelp could intimidate — and he plainly had never imagined I would come out swinging like this.
"...Well. That you have spent your long years holed up in the frontier and sold off whatever etiquette you once had for dealing with people — fine, I can understand that much. But fattening your purse by slaughtering innocent civilians, then preening about your loyalty with such a rosy complexion? That, I confess, I cannot wrap my head around."
At the venomous, storm-like barrage of condemnation, Ding Yuan's face flooded scarlet.
"Silence!! How dare you—!!"
"My lord!!"
Just then the veiled advisor behind him leaned in and whispered something in his ear, holding Ding Yuan back.
And who might that one be? Since when did Ding Yuan keep a civil advisor?
I had assumed nothing served under Ding Yuan but soldiers, so I studied the advisor closely. The gauze veil hid most of the face, but I thought I caught something beneath it — marks, as if smeared in black.
Having heard the advisor out, Ding Yuan strangled down his fury and fixed me with a look that promised murder.
"...My goodwill ends here. You, of all people — I will tear you apart with these hands if it is the last thing I do."
Ding Yuan delivered his threat with chilling menace, turned his back, and marched out of the camp.
"Goodwill, my ass. Listen to the nonsense that comes out of your mouth."
At the low murmur, Ding Yuan's shoulders bunched once more — but he quickly mastered himself and kept walking. The officers and men who had formed his escort trailed after him, back to their own fortified camp.
So we are enemies in full, then.
There would be no avoiding a war with Ding Yuan now. Crossing Lu Bu would be a thorny business indeed — but I had no intention of clasping hands with a bastard who saw the people as tools.
Honestly, with Lu Bu absent from his side, cutting him down right now as he walks away would be far kinder to the future...
Left to my own heart, I would have killed the man then and there — split "Ding Yuan" neatly into "Ding" and "Yuan." But if I did, I — already watched with wariness by the court ministers — would be branded in the Romance as no different from Dong Zhuo. Perhaps he had come strutting so boldly precisely because he knew Wang Yun and the court ministers were sheltering him. This was why a "just cause" could be such a wretched thing: without a proper pretext, even a man who deserved to die went on breathing.
I need to meet with Yuan Shao, and soon.
"Well now. That makes us outright enemies, my lord."
Jia Xu drifted over and said it; I nodded.
"It does. But really — how could I ever serve under a man like that?"
"A wise judgment, my lord."
Jia Xu gave her assent to my decision.
"Ding Yuan is not a man built to last. Headstrong and arrogant, and he knows no one but himself."
For a man who held the Emperor in his grasp and had cemented his position at a stroke by purging the Ten Attendants, Ding Yuan's political judgment was not merely lacking — it was absent altogether. Granting the Bing Province army license to pillage while he needed the goodwill of the scholar-gentry of the Clear Stream faction was proof enough of that. How a man like that had ever come to enjoy the backing of the court ministers, I could not fathom. In sheer audacity he matched any of the young generals, but set against Dong Zhuo — a fellow son of the frontier — his political instincts and his charisma, the power to bend others to his will, fell hopelessly short.
"So. How should we move from here?"
When I asked Jia Xu about our course ahead, the answer came without a beat of hesitation.
"For now, the Bing Province army holds the Emperor and basks in the Clear Stream faction's support — their strength is formidable. We must not meet them head-on."
"I supposed as much. Besides, they are plainly veterans in their own right — men who have crossed blades with the foreign tribes."
If Liangzhou's elites had stood against the Qiang and the Di, then Bing Province's soldiers had spent their years at war with the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, and the rest of the steppe peoples.
"Grant me a war chest, and I will use it to dispatch agents and informants into Luoyang — to map the strengths and weaknesses of Ding Yuan's army and lay the groundwork for breaking his power."
"I'll leave it to you."
Even in the Romance, this was the woman who had taken Lu Bu — she who had killed Dong Zhuo and stood with Wang Yun at the very summit of power, flaunting her might — and handed her a humiliating defeat through the rebel generals Li Jue and Guo Si. I trusted whatever scheme she was about to produce without a flicker of doubt, and entrusted her with the war funds.